Excerpt from The Long March by Sun Shuyun, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She was not surprised to see me, a complete stranger, walking in off the street and wanting to find out about her past. My copy of her biography was a good enough introduction. She asked me to sit down and called, “Another visitor from Beijing!” A middle–aged woman came out. From what I had read, I assumed she was her adopted daughter—Wang was unable to conceive after the Long March. “You shouldn’t ask too many questions, she gets too excited. Last week we had a journalist from Beijing, and she talked so much, it made her ill. Anyway, it is all in there,” she said, referring to the book on my lap. Wang cut her short. “They think talking is a waste of breath, but they don’t understand. So many men and women died for the good life we live today and I want people to remember that.” She sent her daughter back inside for another biography, written by a local Party historian. “You might not have come across it.”

The daughter came out with the book and a tray of sliced watermelon. “Eat now, read later. I will answer all your questions. It will take you a few days—you see, unfortunately, I have had such a long life.” She took a mouthful of the melon, and smiled, as if it was the rarest fruit in the world and she was tasting it for the first time. Clearly she was keen to talk. She was quick and warm, and over the next three days she opened up like the pomegranates—I heard of the idealism, the hope, the suffering, the sacrifice, the harshness, and the courage of her life, like those of so many others. But Wang also painted in some of the shadows of her history, things that were almost against her nature to reveal, and most certainly at odds with the glorious stories of the Long March that I had grown up with.

Wang was born in 1913 in Lufu Village, not far from where she lives now. Her family barely had enough rice for six months after the landlord took his exorbitant rent. From the age of 5, she roamed the mountains with her sister to collect wild plants to eat. By the time she was 11, her parents found her a husband, who offered to pay off the family debt of 200 kilos of rice. She was in the dark about the arrangement until the wedding day, when her mother dressed her in a bright red outfit, and put her on a palanquin sent by the groom. He was sixteen years older than Wang, slightly retarded, and with so many smallpox scars he was nicknamed Big Smallpox. The villagers said a flower had been planted on a cowpie. When Wang saw him, she fainted, but her mother said the rice was in the pot, and nothing could be done about it.

Her parents’ only request was that he would not consummate the marriage until Wang was 18. Meanwhile, she would work like a slave in his household. But he could not wait for seven years: he slept around and the wife of a blind fortune–teller bore him a son. Gossip spread around the village and Wang was so humiliated that she returned to her parents’ house, hoping they would pity her and annul the marriage. No, you must go back, her mother told her. “When you marry a chicken, live with a chicken; when you marry a dog, live with a dog.” It was fate.

When the Red Army marched into her village in the spring of 1930, she learned it was not fate. “Why do the landlords have so much land, while you have none?” a Red Army officer asked her and her family. “Why do they eat fat pork every day, while you don’t see one drop of oil for a whole year? Why do they wear silk while you are in rags? It isn’t fair! For every one of them, there are ten of us. If we unite, we are bound to win. What do you say? Join us! Join the Revolution!” She signed up on the spot, and her family received land, salt, rice, ham, and tools, all confiscated from the landlords.

She told everyone about the benefits of the Communist Revolution, citing herself and her family as examples. And she did so by using the most popular method in rural Jiangxi—folk songs. She set new words to the old tunes, not the usual love ballads but full of zeal for the Revolution. She was so good, she was given the nickname “Golden Throat.” This was one of her favorites:

Excerpted from The Long March by Sun Shuyun Copyright © 2007 by Sun Shuyun. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.